HP still has plenty of love for SCO, but it doesn't want the public to know about it.

Just yesterday, we noted HP's appearance as the premier sponsor on SCO's City-to-City Tour Web site. The HP logo was displayed in full force, showing their backing of SCO's October user conference tour. Then, but a few hours later, the HP banner disappeared leaving us looking rather silly and feeling rather confused.

Was it a bad dream? Was HP really sponsoring a SCO event even though it announced a rather anti-SCO Linux indemnification program just days ago?

Yes and no.

HP is still sponsoring the SCO City-to-City Tour, but it did ask the great Utah IP defender to pull mention of its backing from the Web site. Now, Microlite sits alone as a SCO friend, receiving premier sponsorship perks without paying the premier sponsor price.

HP says it "did not want to confuse the issue with either Linux or Unix customers." While it wants to extend a warm hand to current SCO users, HP doesn't want to scare new Linux types off.

It's tough nuzzling up to a company who many see as a pariah while still reaching out to an old, faithful user base. HP ran into the same problem earlier this year with SCO Forum but still appears a tad shaky on how its SCO love should be handled.

Even though SCO would like some of its friends to stand proud and back the company, it can at least find solace in the fact that it has pulled off a marketing miracle. Sponsors are shelling out to keep its City-to-City tour going and not even asking for anything in return. We should all be so lucky. ®